In 1927 British Instructional Films (BIF) wrote to the Colonial Office asking for the exclusive right to be ‘commissioned by Colonial Governments to make cinematograph pictures of an educational character demonstrating local resources and development’ (CO 323/985/23). BIF had earlier worked with the Crown Agents in producing ‘The Empire Series’, three sets each of up to 12 films based, in part, on material shown at the Empire Exhibition of 1924-25. It had also received commissions from the Admiralty (for example Britain’s Birthright, 1924), and had worked with Colonial governments overseas (for example with the Nigerian Government in the production of Palaver, 1926). While the company was widely praised for its productions, which the Imperial Institute said were ‘in every way superior from those obtained from other sources’, the Crown Agents were reluctant to grant exclusive rights (CO 323/985/23). Nevertheless, during 1927 BIF was commissioned by the Cypriot Government, by commercial companies (making a film for Cadbury, showing the company’s activities in West Africa) and, most notably, by the Gold Coast Government, for whom it made the official film of the construction and opening of Takoradi Harbour (The Times, 26 April 1928, 24).

The Opening of Takoradi Harbour and the other films BIF produced for Colonial governments were intended primarily as publicity for the colonies, in particular to attract trade and investment. West Africa Calling, while using footage featured within The Opening of Takoradi Harbour and within many of the West African pictures from The Empire Series, served a different ideological purpose. Commissioned by the Conservative Party in Britain, the film was intended for British workers (rather than businesses and investors) and was aligned to domestic economic and imperial policies. In particular, it promoted the Conservative Party’s proposed system of ‘imperial preference’, seeking to convince British workers (and voters) that the party’s protectionist policies would benefit them by creating more jobs. This was no easy task, as it was widely believed that tariffs would help businesses more than consumers, who would be susceptible to an increase in the cost of their daily foodstuffs. The Conservatives had lost the election of 1923 while campaigning for tariffs, and won a year later only after dropping the issue from their manifesto.

The Conservative Party’s economic policy marked a shift from the free trade liberalism that had dominated British economic policy since the middle of the 19th century. In a post-war climate of economic depression and rival imperial powers, many Conservatives (with the notable exception of Churchill) now proposed increased government intervention, in the form of protectionist tariffs on imported materials. These tariffs would be lowered or withdrawn for countries within the Empire. The policy indicated the strengthening of a political and economic imperial bloc, which was further consolidated with the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the formal establishment of the Commonwealth of Nations (Grieveson, 2011). 

The Conservatives argued that these protectionist policies would benefit British industry, protecting it from emerging industrial nations and creating an active market in which it could trade. In particular, the Conservatives argued that colonial development and ‘imperial preference’ would create more jobs for workers in Britain, as the party sought to counter the political radicalism of worker unrest, most clearly manifested in the General Strike of 1926. The policy was strongly championed by the Secretary of States for the Colonies, Leo Amery who argued that, in creating employment, tariffs would detach ‘the working people in this country from the anti-imperialist leaders of Socialism’ (Grieveson, 2011).

West Africa Calling was one of a number of films produced for the Conservative Party that promoted imperial trade (see for example Empire Trade, 1934). The Conservatives were the first political party in Britain to recognise the potential of film as propaganda, establishing a film department within its Central Office in 1925 and commissioning its own films from 1926. Joseph Ball, the Party’s chief publicity officer between 1927 and 1929, was particularly keen on using film to reach the ‘unconverted working classes, a section of the populace which no traditional method of publicity appeared effectively to reach’ (Hollins, 1981, 361). As commercial cinemas opposed the exhibition of political films, the party established a network of cinema vans with which it presented its films to the public. Historian Timothy Hollins argued that the daylight cinema vans helped to draw a large audience (of over a thousand in towns and cities in the early tours) encompassing various political backgrounds. This audience would watch half an hour of film and then listen to lengthy speeches and question and answer sessions, often from a local MP or candidate. The films, playing regularly and widely across the country, thus served not simply to ‘propagandise in their own right, but also to act as a crowd-puller’, to attract a disparate audience to political meetings (Hollins, 1981, 362).

By 1930 there were 12 outdoor vans and 12 vans carrying portable equipment for indoor use (Hollins, 1981, 363). In the 1931 election season, the cinema vans visited 79 towns and during the 1935 election, played to an estimated audience of 1.5 million (Grieveson, 2011).